Born to Fly
by weiss kittyn
Summary: Ten years afterwards, and most of them are gone. The ones who are left discover that survivors guilt can be just as lethal as swords or guns. A tale of sickness, health, death, and life. Formerly Time and Time again, which has been scrapped.
1. Peculiar People

(I've been working on Accidentally in Love again, and am at a point where I don't know what to do with it - i scrapped the notebook idea, because i've lost the notebook, for good this time I think. It's becoming very dialogue heavy, because I love dialogue, and I was like, 'that's getting boring,' and decided to take a break from it. Don't ask where this idea came from; I'm bored SHITLESS right now. Anywho, there's no beta-ing or anything going into this; [not that there usually is XD because I'm typing it straight into the text box of AFF's upload section :3)

* * *

He stared up at the hospital through his wet hair, watching the rain drops slide down in front of his eyes. The dye hadn't completely settled yet, and the water was tinted faintly bluish. 

He coughed violently, and then pulled a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. He stepped under the awning to light it, waiting for his agent to hurry up and get out of the car.

"Mamoru-sama, you really shouldn't smoke," she said, holding an umbrella up above her head. He blew smoke in her face, not caring while she coughed.

"Stop me," he said childishly. "I don't see why we're here anyway. It's not like they're going to do anything for me."

"Mamoru-sama!" The petite foreign woman stamped her foot, taking the tone with him that let him know he wasn't being appreciated. Mamoru sighed, dropping the rest of the cigarette and pushing the tip out with the toe of his boot.

"Well, let's go inside and let them tell me how long." He didn't bother waiting for her, and she lagged behind to fold the umbrella up anyway.

The nurse at the desk looked up and recognized him instantly despite the change in hair colour. She paled. "Good afternoon, Takatori-sama," she said politely. "Please follow Nina." She pointed to a timid looking woman standing mousishly by the wall.

"Please follow me, Takatori-sama," she whispered, bowing, and Mamoru wished he'd finished his cigarette. He had a feeling he'd be needing the nicotine now. The twitchy nurse led him to a room and left him for only a few moments, before returning with a clipboard, to do things like take his blood pressure. His agent, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties by the name of Takaoka Kyoko, stayed in the hallway.

"The doctor will be with you shortly," Mousy-Nurse said, and Mamoru flicked her a disinterested glance. She scurried out of the room, presumably to go gossip with her friends.

To his surprise, her gossiping friends apparently included the doctor, as he showed up not even five minutes later. "If only my service had been this good five years ago, I might have kept coming," Mamoru said waspishly, eyeing the name badge hooked to the long white coat. "White really isn't your colour," he added, glaring balefully.

The badge proudly proclaimed the man before him to be none other than Naoe Nagi, MD. "I'm glad you think so, Takatori-san," Naoe said calmly. His tone was inflectionless, and Mamoru had no idea what he thought about this meeting.

"Aren't you a little young to be a doctor?"

"Aren't you a little young to be dying?" Came the rejoinder, and Mamoru's heart clenched in his chest. "Symptoms?"

"Tell me, is it easier to kill people this way?" His rude tone earned him a disapproving glare; he didn't care, let them disapprove. It didn't matter in the end anyway.

"I haven't killed anyone in nearly ten years. Symptoms?" Mamoru leaned back on his hands, ignoring the painful jab from his wrist up his arm.

"Which ones?" He asked, determined to make this difficult. Naoe was utterly unflappable.

"The ones that sent your agent crawling to my doorstep last night, begging me to save your life," he said dryly. Mamoru flashed him a grin.

"I'm surprised she came begging for my life; after the shock I gave her I would have thought she'd have gone for herself and the heart attack I nearly gave her."

"Symptoms?" Naoe asked again, and Mamoru detected a hint of irritation under the calm facade. "Just because people pay you money to act in movies it doesn't give you the right to come in here and harrass me," he added.

"Good. Let me go and die in peace then. Or if you're feeling really good about yourself, give me something to make it faster."

Naoe glared at him. "You spoiled, pretentious, shit-talking _brat_. Do you think I'm about to help you commit suicide? No. Symptoms!"

"Heart pain. I mean, chest pain. Whatever. Can't use my arms very well. Headaches all the time. Cough. Stuff in my lungs. Can't sleep. Kyoko tells me that my personality's gone down the drain, too."

"You? Personality? Can't imagine how you've been lying to these people all this time." Naoe's tone was sharp, and Mamoru couldn't help the bark of laughter that followed it. This immediately set off his cough, and he clutched at his shirt as he gasped for breath around the hacking spasm.

Naoe instantly returned to his doctor role again, and put the stethoscope into his ears and pressed it to Mamoru's back, listening to him wheeze. "Hear anyth-- anything you like?" Mamoru gasped, scowling. Naoe made some notes in the clipboard.

"I'm going to need to take a blood sample in order to confirm or deny," he said. "But I'm not going to lie to you. You're dying."

"News flash, doc, I've known that for months. What's your patient mortality rate?"

Naoe paused by the door, and looked back at him. "Zero," he said at last. "I'm sending Nina back in here. Try not to frighten her." And he was gone again.

"Hah. Imagine that. Schwarz. After all this time." He looked up at the no-smoking sign, and pulled a cigarette from his pocket. "Huh."

(TBC)


	2. Knock Three Times

Nagi sat down in his office chair at home, and pulled his glasses off to rub at his face. _What the hell did I do to deserve Takatori Mamoru as a patient?_

His assistant and room mate came in shortly afterwards with a cup of tea. "Rough day?" he asked, coming around to rub at Nagi's shoulders. Nagi shrugged, leaning into the touch.

"You remember Takatori Mamoru, don't you Jei?" The tone in his voice was harsh, and he did his best to moderate it. The white-haired man looked thoughtful for a moment.

"He used to be called Tsukiyono Omi, didn't he? He's an actor now."

"He's a dying actor," Nagi said bitterly. "And he's all too ready to go. And determined to piss as many people off on the way there as he can." Jei's shoulder rubbing turned into a full-fledged massage as he turned his attention to working the knots of tension out of Nagi's shoulders.

There was a few moments of peaceful silence, broken only by Nagi's sighs. "He's dying," Jei said quietly. "Can you help him?"

Nagi laughed bitterly. "The question is can I bring myself to help him? He's an asshole now. I wonder what happened to the sweet little boy we used to try and kill."

"Life happened," Jei offered. "A bad life, from what I've heard. All his friends are dead, right?" Nagi finished the tea, and stood. Jei moved back to give him room.

"Let's go sit in the living room. It's more comfortable in there." They relocated, Nagi curling up on his chair with another cup of tea, and Jei settled himself in his seat with the newspaper and his coffee. "They're dead?" Nagi asked, picking up the trail of conversation from earlier.

"You didn't know?" Jei was surprised; he still kept up with the doings of the underworld, even if he didn't have any affect on them himself any more. He was content as Nagi's aide, living a quieter life than the one he'd been leading as a youth. "I heard Fujimiya was stabbed and left on the street to die; a hit, I thought, for revenge. Police ruled it random violence, and buried him in the public cemetary. Hidaka was drowned in a face full of bleach in prison, and Kudou was in a car accident with his family. We took out Kritiker when Schwarz was still together, and then Mamoru vanished, only to reappear a year later in a movie. He was an instant success if I recall rightly; local girls flocked to him at that flower shop, and women everywhere flocked to him after that movie."

"Did you know that one of the Kritiker agents is still alive? She's acting as his manager now. She seemed a little off, though."

"Takaoka Kyoko," Jei said after a moment of searching through his encyclopedic memory. "She lost her memory in the explosion of Kritiker's HQ, and couldn't quite shake the knowledge that she'd known Mamoru. He took her in to keep her close to him, and they've been a pair ever since."

Nagi looked started. "A pair? They're sleeping together?"

"If the rumour mill is to believed, Mamoru is inclined towards members of his own sex," Jei said, shrugging. Nagi absorbed this in silence, and then turned to his book. They sat in companionable silence until they retired to bed, each with his own thoughts.

* * *

Nagi stared down at the name on his paper in dismay. He'd only been on shift for five minutes, and already the day was looking down. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door. Mamoru sat idly on the chair, smoking.

"Please do not smoke inside the hospital," Nagi ground out politely. He received a face full of smoke by way of reply, and then reached out with his gift and smashed the cigarette to bits, effectively putting it out.

"Bastard," Mamoru commented lightly, pulling another one from his pocket without lighting it.

"My parents were married when I was born, which is more than I can say for you." He didn't mean for the words to come out; the other boy had always brought out the worst in him, and ten years separation made no difference.

Mamoru shrugged the jibe off with a laugh. "So you do have claws," he remarked. "I was beginning to wonder if you ever said anything worth listening to."

"It's five in the morning, why are you in here?" Nagi's patience was dangling by a thread, and he had a feeling that Mamoru was playing with scissors.

"I couldn't sleep," was all he said. Nagi felt the thread beginning to fray.   
"Nyquil!" he barked. "It's helpful!" He regretted the words almost immediately, watching the way Mamoru's eyes lit up.

"Ooh, can I have some? Kyoko won't let me take the stuff; I'm deathly allergic to it." It took every last _ounce_ of his self control not to give into old habits and just toss the older man out through the wall.

"No, if you're allergic to it, I'm not prescribing nyquil. Why couldn't you sleep?" Nagi settled himself in the other chair, examining his patient from a distance. There were dark circles under his eyes, proof that he hadn't been sleeping well in a long time. His face was gaunt, his cheeks hollow. He looked like death warmed over, and Nagi wondered if he was saveable. He didn't want his one time nemesis to be the first patient he'd ever had die on him, he couldn't let Mamoru one-up him that way. He vowed to save him, to give him his life back.

"I had a headache," Mamoru said tritely. Nagi pulled patience from somewhere he'd never reached into before, his compassion as a doctor taking over for his intense personal dislike of the man in front of him. "It started here," he pointed to his head, behind his ear. "And within half an hour, it had taken over my entire head. Nothing took the pain away. Kyoko's rationed my pills, because she's afraid I'll take the bottle one day and not wake up." He looked haggard all of a sudden, and old. Nagi realized that behind the front he was putting up - he was always putting up a front, always hiding, had since he was a child, Nagi'd _known_ that! Had known that the rude exterior was hiding something sensitive within it. Nagi berated himself mentally for forgetting who he was dealing with. He wasn't Fujimiya who hid behind an icy mask until he burned it away with rage, or Kudou who agonized over things long dead, and especially not Hidaka who'd worn his feelings on his sleeve. This was Tsukiyono, the one who put on a happy face no matter what hid behind it.

This illness was taking it's toll on him, and no one could get far enough past the brash exterior to find out just how hard it was on him. Nagi felt something flare to life, something he'd thought extinguished long ago.

He felt pity for the young man before him.

(TBC)


	3. The Last Time That I Saw You

Mamoru stared at the pale doctor in front of him. His head was still throbbing, still beating against his skull with agonizing regularity, and it was taking all his self control not to start twitching or screaming, anything to help alleviate the pain.

He could see something foreign in the other man's eyes, something he saw in too many people's faces these days, and decided he'd hate the other man if he said anything like, "I'm sorry."

"Do you have anything for me, Doctor?" He asked after a period of extended silence. The sound of his own voice against his ears was harsh, and he winced. The feel of the cigarette in his hands made him want to light it, and his fingers twitched in the direction of his lighter before he remembered that the good doctor was telekinetic, and would ruin another of his smokes if he tried.

"I don't know what to prescribe you," Naoe said at last. "Give me a list of your allergies, and I'll see what I can do." He didn't sound very convincing.

_I know, you bastard, you'd just as soon see me rot in hell. As long as you take the pain away before I go, we'll be square._ Mamoru leaned back in his chair, his fingers twitching around the cigarette in time with the pounding in his head.

"Doxylamine, dog dander, and peanuts. Doxylamine sends me into anaphylactic shock, and the other two are just mild irritants. No one's ever been able to figure out why doxylamine causes anaphylaxis." Naoe wrote them down carefully, ever attentive to his charge.

Mamoru took a deep breath, and let it out quickly when he realized that the room had started spinning dangerously around him. His headache had doubled in intensity, the throbbing turning into a pounding that felt like Thor was inside his head, pounding to get out. Or was that Athena and Zeus?

This was no time for piddling jokes like that, he told himself, and watched as the cigarette dropped from nerveless fingers. _I'm going to be sick,_ he realized, and gasped in a short breath. "Doc... Na...Nagi.."

He had time to witness Naoe's head jerk up to look at him just as the spinning turned into darkness and he collapsed forward.

* * *

He opened his eyes to a vast and bright white light. It stabbed into his eyes with all the mercy of the morning sun, and he flinched backwards, his head pushing against something soft. He turned his face away from the horrific light, and blinked to adjust his eyes. A machine next to the bed blinked evenly, proclaiming his heart-rate to be normal.

_I'm still alive?_ Mamoru sat up slowly, testing his headache. His head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton balls and old laundry, but the pain was gone. It was just _gone_. The sudden absence of pain was almost as frightening as the onset itself, and he wondered what that mad doctor had done to him this time.

"It's not Nagi's doing," came a familiar voice, and Mamoru jerked his eyes over to the source of it, still in awe at being able to move without pain. He almost passed over the person in the chair without recognizing them; they'd been so different the last time he'd seen them.

"You were different too. Black hair suits you, you know. Makes you look like less of a child porn-star and more like the adult celebrity you actually are."

Mamoru focused on him, and then sneered, taking in the short-cropped red hair and lime-green shirt. "Schuldig," he said conversationally. "I can't say it's nice to see you again, but how've you been? I see you've managed to stay alive."

"Can't say the same for you," came the amused rejoinder. "And be nice to me, it's on my say so that Jei's taking away your pain."

Mamoru frowned at him. "Jei?" Schuldig pointed, smirking the old smirk, and Mamoru followed his gesture with his eyes. A familiar white-haired figure sat on the chair nearby, looking peaceful. Mamoru didn't even have the energy to be surprised. "Ah," he said.

Jei unfolded himself from the chair. "You probably remember me by another name," he said. "But I assure you, those days are long past. My powers have fully matured now, and I assure you, I am more than capable of taking care of you."

Mamoru gaped at him. "Powers?" He asked, and the door opened. Naoe and Crawford stepped in, and Mamoru pressed his hands into his eyes. "This is just fan-fucking-tastic." The four former members of Schwarz shared a look, and telepathic communication.

Naoe stepped forward. "Jei is a very capable empath," he said by way of explanation. "He's the one keeping your headache at bay while we figure out what the hell you did to yourself to get into such shoddy condition."

"Lived," Mamoru said bitterly, eyeing the grey streaks in Crawford's hair. It didn't make him look old; instead it gave him a dignified air. It wasn't unattractive, especially since the horrid cream suits of years gone past had been discarded, and he now settled himself in the chair next to Schuldig's wearing a pair of loose jeans and a buttoned-down shirt.

He took a better look at the people around him. Naoe was dressed in a long white coat and a pale brown shirt and tie, a small pair of glasses perched on his nose. Jei was also in a white coat, though he had blue on underneath it instead of brown. They'd all moved on as people, living their lives. The two strongest had become doctors, and who knew what the telepathic freak and the precog did.

"I'm a writer," Schuldig piped in cheerfully, replying to his thoughts.

_Christ,_ Mamoru thought. _Two doctors, a writer, an actor, and what the hell does Crawford do? ... No answer?_

"I am an actor, as well," Crawford said mildly by way of answer. Mamoru stared at him. "You may recognize the name Brad Tremain?"

His thoughts whirled as he tried to place the name, and then blinked in surprise. "That's you?" he asked stupidly. "Why acting?"

"One can ask the same of you," the other man said, still projecting an air of being non-threatening. "Why acting?"

Mamoru stared angrily down at his hands clenched into fists in his lap, and considered the question. Why acting? "It's the furthest thing from ... Weiss... as I could get," he said after a long pause. Naoe stood to leave in response to a page over the intercom.

"Jei," he said, pausing beside the former madman. Something passed between them non-verbally, though Mamoru didn't have the energy to wonder if they'd spoken telepathically. He wanted a cigarette so badly he could taste the nicotine on his tongue already.

"I'm going downstairs to smoke," he said, and began to gingerly climb out of the bed. Jei glared balefully at him, and when he continued undaunted, stood to help him.

"If you've got to pander to that disgusting habit, you should at least not kill yourself on the way down," he said and fetched a wheelchair.

Mamoru glared at him. "If you think I'm going to sit in that thing you've got another thing com-aAHh!" He crumpled to the ground as the fuzzy thickness around his head lifted, and the pain returned full-force. Dizzy and sick, he curled around himself in an effort to will the pain from his body. When the blanket of soothing stuffiness settled again, he refused to uncurl.

"Are you going to sit in the wheel-chair?" Jei asked calmly, as though he hadn't just tortured his patient into agreeing. Mamoru nodded, and stood shakily.

"Bastard," he said quietly, sitting down in the hated chair. Schuldig waggled his fingers in farewell.

(TBC)


	4. Where is my Mind?

Nagi, Jei just about decapitated your little pet-project, Schuldig sent down the mental link between Schwarz, watching Mamoru being wheeled out of the room, a grouchy expression on his face and murderous thoughts swirling around in his head. He sure is lively for just waking up.

Several floors below them, Nagi looked up from the paperwork he was filling out, fixing his gaze on a piece of paper taped to the wall. /What? What does that mean?/

He hastily scrawled his signature onto the bottom of the paper, and hurried back to the elevator, wondering the whole time about when and why Takatori Mamoru had become so important as a patient.

_Maybe when he passed out in your office and didn't wake up for two days,_ he answered himself.

Two days? You mean he just collapsed like that and was out for fourty eight hours?

/You're listening? It was actually closer to fifty. We put him into the coma ward because of it./

I don't think he's realized it yet. He just went downstairs in a wheelchair to have a smoke.

Nagi paused, considering his ex-teammate. /And you didn't go with him?/

Nagi, Nagi, Nagi! I told you, I gave up smoking.

Nagi rolled his eyes, and pressed the button for the first floor on the elevator. It went to the seventh, opened, and then went back down to the first without stopping again. He stepped out of the small room and looked through the doors towards the smoking area. Sure enough, Jei was leaning over a black-haired man in a wheelchair. Exiting the building quietly, Nagi stepped up beside them.

"You really shouldn't smoke," he said, and Mamoru blew smoke into his face.

"You really should know better than to tell me what not to do." the actor said nastily. Nagi reached out with his telepathy and tugged on the cigarette by way of a warning. Mamoru shot him a nasty look, and held on tighter.

"Let go of it, you crazy doctor." Nagi releashed his hold on it, and if Jei had not been behind the chair, Mamoru would have jerked backwards in it, having forgotten to put on the brakes. Jei calmly reached down and pushed the lever to stop the chair from rolling, and Mamoru glowered at him. "If you let me up out of this damned thing, I'll be happy to show you that I can walk just fine, when you're not torturing me with my own pain."

Jei merely looked bored. "Considering the fact that the last time you were on your feet alone you collapsed, I can not, in good consciousness, allow you to injure yourself for your stubborn pride. You'll walk again when Nagi says you are strong enough for it."

"It was only this morning, for chrissakes, and- ... what?" He never finished what he was about to say, instead trailing off to inquire about the look the two doctors exchanged.

"Takatori-san," Nagi said placatingly. "You passed out two days ago. It's Thursday the nineteenth."

Mamoru looked a bit shell-shocked. "What? But I can't have been asleep for two days, it feels like... It... I..."

Jei reached down and plucked the cigarette from his fingers, snubbing it out into the ashtray provided. "I think you need to lay down and rest more. I'll get Schuldig out of your room if you don't like him being there."   
"Schuldig can kiss my ass," Mamoru said hotly, and was rewarded with a laugh echoing into his head.

Is that a threat or an offer?

/Schuldig, please do not encourage him, he's enough of a jerk on his own without being baited./

* * *

Two weeks later found Mamoru still in the hospital, with Nagi still at his bedside. This time, the actor didn't have enough energy to even sit up, much less walk himself down to the designated smoking area. Nagi stared at his patient as he slept, wondering what was wrong.

_It's like he's lost the will to live,_ the lithe telekinetic mused. _It's like he's shutting down. There's nothing physically wrong with him, but he just keeps getting sicker._

Hey, kid. Schuldig's voice lanced through his thoughts, startling him out of his daze. Brad says to pass on that you should give him a reason to live. Also, Kyoko's just been in a car accident.

/What?!/ "Mamoru. Mamoru, wake up." He put his hand gently down on Mamoru's shoulder, and got no reaction. "Takatori san," he called. "Omi!"

Mamoru jerked awake, getting half-way into a sitting position before he stopped moving and looked around. "Oh... it's... it's you."

Nagi was startled enough by the action to think it through, and realize that the only people who'd called him Omi were his team-mates. His dead team-mates. He clamped down on the part of him that wanted to be sorry for the older man. "I have some bad news," he said, putting a hand on Mamoru's shoulder. "Schuldig just told me that Kyoko-"

Mamoru's phone rang, and he retrieved it from the bed-table to answer it, not caring that Nagi was speaking. "Hello?" He was silent for a long time. "What?"

Nagi watched the blood drain from his already pale face, turning his skin an ashen grey. "Mamoru-"

"Kyoko was in a car accident? Is that what you were about to tell me?"

Nagi found he couldn't look his patient in the eyes. He averted his gaze, fixing it on the machine monitering Mamoru's heart rate. "Yes," he said quietly. "Schuldig told me moments before you received your phone call."

"Doctor Naoe," someone called from the hall. A cute nurse poked her head in the door. "Sorry to interrupt, Nagi, but I need your help down here with one of the patients."

Nagi turned his attention to the man on the bed. "Stay here," he said firmly. "I'll be right back."

He followed the nurse out into the hall to assist her, and hoped that Mamoru would have the good sense to stay put.

(TBC)


	5. Everytime

Mamoru glared at the doorway the doctor had gone out through, growling to himself. "If he thinks I'm just going to stay put like a god-damned dog, he's got another thing coming!"

He stood up slowly, making sure he wasn't going to fall over and injure himself. When he was sure he could stand, he took a few halting steps forward. _I don't want to get halfway down there and collapse,_ he thought, determined to get to the receptionist and ask about Kyoko. He reached the door without incident, and looked out. Naoe was busy with another patient, someone who wasn't meant to be on that particular floor of the hospital.

Mamoru had been insulted and irritated by turns when he'd found out they'd put him on the coma-ward, and left him there when he woke up due to the nature of whatever was affecting him. The super-massive headache he'd had that had driven him to the hospital weeks prior had dissipated, leaving him feeling weak and nauseous most of the time.

Peering at Naoe for a moment longer, Mamoru decided that it was safe to go, and he moved quickly out of the room and into the hall. He was grateful for the loose fitting tunic and pantsuit he was wearing, because he'd never have made it if he'd been waiting to change his clothes from the backless hospital gown he'd seen others wearing.

Turning quickly, he glanced at Naoe again to ensure that he wasn't watching, and then scurried into the elevator. He pressed the button for the first floor, and then the button that would close the doors immediately. From further down the hall, he heard Naoe calling to him.

"Takatori-san. Taka- Don't! Mamoru!" The doors closed on the noise, and began the descent from the seventh floor to the first. Mamoru sank to the floor, dizzy from the unexpected motion. To his great fortune, the doors never opened once until they reached the lobby, and he stood as the counter reached '1'. He made his way slowly over to the receptionist, and smiled at her.

"Excuse me, miss," he said politely. She looked up and blushed as she realized who she was talking to. "My friend was just in a car accident, has she been brought in yet?"

The poor woman was so flustered that she nearly knocked over her coffee. "I-I'm sorry, sir, do you mind telling me the name?"

"Kyoko. Takaoka Kyoko."

The lady's face flushed as she checked her records. Behind them, the doors slammed open and paramedics rushed in with a stretcher. Mamoru looked over, and recognized the bracelet he'd given his agent for her birthday hanging from the wrist dangling from the body on the bed.

"Kyoko!" Mamoru hurried after them just as the elevator dinged, and a familiar voice called out his name.

"Mamoru!" Ignoring the voice he couldn't quite place, he hurried after the group of people shouting orders to one another. "Mamo-dammit! Mamoru!" He was vaguely aware of the voice fading into the background as he came up on the group.

"Kyoko... Is she alright?"

One of the paramedics split off from the group, stalling him. "She's been in a car accident. There is severe trauma to her head; we're getting her into ICU right now. Please go to the waiting room, and someone will be along to tell you about her condition as soon as she is stable."

Mamoru clutched at him. "Is she going to die?" he asked, and didn't even recognize his own voice. "Tell me she'll be alright!"

"I'm sorry, sir," the paramedic said, and left with an apologetic look. Mamoru flopped against the wall, and sank to the ground.

"Please don't die, Kyoko," he murmured, and saw a familiar pair of feet walk up and stand in front of him. A noise issued from somewhere above him, but it was blurred in his ears and unrecognizeable. There was a shout, but it was the last thing he heard before darkness overwhelmed him again.

* * *

"This is getting really old," he muttered to himself, not even bothering to open his eyes.

"If you'd stay where you're told and not go gallivanting off around the hospital, you'd be getting better." Jei's voice sounded reprimanding.

Mamoru cracked his eyelids open and glared at him. "You're one to talk. Stop me next time then." He left it unsaid that he didn't expect to be getting better any time soon; the other man could feel the emotions behind the thought anyway. "You should just give me the NyQuil and let me be anyway. We both know I'm not going to survive this."

"My duty as a physician prevents me from assisting you in your quest to end your own life," Jei said. "Though my personal feelings are far different. You need to either get well, or die, and do it soon, because I'm tired of you disrupting Nagi's life."

Mamoru looked back at him in surprise. Jei avoided talking to him if it was at all feasible, and he almost always avoided being alone with him. Mamoru was surprised to find that not only were they the only two people in the room, Jei was speaking to him. "How the hell am I disrupting his life? I came here because Kyoko practically put a gun against my head. I was expecting a pat on the ass and a signed note saying that I was exempt from finishing the damn movie due to extreme circumstances, and told to go home and die in peace. I didn't ask to be locked up inside this room like a prisoner."

"You're disrupting his life because he doesn't ever think about anything but you. He's always talking about you, thinking about you, worrying over you. He's not sleeping, and he's losing weight because you're wasting away to nothing, convinced that you're going to die. He can't figure out what's wrong with you because everything shows up fine on tests."

Mamoru exploded, his temper rising with each word. "You want to know what's wrong? You want to know why I'm trying to die?! Because I have_ nothing_! There is **no one** left but me!"

"What about your precious Kyoko?" Jei sneered. Mamoru scowled.

"That's not the Kyoko I grew up with," he said. "She's a totally different woman, and it's all your fault. You destroyed EVERYTHING that was ever worth anything to me, and now you try to keep me here in misery with the remains of a life once lived?"

Jei considered him with one yellow eye. Mamoru was almost more afraid of the sanity he found there now than he was of the madness that was there the first time they'd met.

"I try to keep you alive because it's my work as a doctor," he said at last. "Nagi keeps you alive for reasons that are his own. You have been in a coma for four days. Kyoko is also on this floor, room seven nineteen."

Mamoru stared at him. "Why are you telling me about Kyoko? I'd think that you wouldn't want me to know anything."

Jei smirked at him. "I want you dead. We'd be better off that way. Nagi would like you to live. He's my dearest friend. I do what I can to help you live because he would be unhappy if you died." He pushed the wheelchair away from the wall, and closer to the bed before leaving. Mamoru pushed the blankets away and staggered up into the chair.

"Hate this stupid thing..."

Before she went under, Kyoko was asking about you. Too bad you were too deeply asleep to reach. Shall I leave her a message saying you're alright?

Mamoru paused, listening. _And here come the rest of them, come to torment me like the old days,_ he thought loudly.

Just me. I write screenplays as well as novels, you know. Maybe you'd be interested in my latest one? It's about a college rebel and his teacher.

"Why would I be interested in that?" Mamoru asked out loud, pushing his door open. Anyone listening to him would probably think him crazy.

The press is having a field day with you slipping between fully conscious and functional, and being in a coma. They think Nagi's poisoning you for some reason. I think it has something to do with Kyoko letting it slip out that you two didn't used to get along. Anyway, my screenplay. Wanna hear it?

"Don't you have anything better to do at four in the morning?" Mamoru asked rhetorically.

Of course not. Besides, I'm a career writer. I suffer from amnesia professionally. Want to hear about it?

"Fine," Mamoru said, wheeling himself into Kyoko's room. Schuldig laughed.

Promise not to make fun of it? Brad says that you'll be the main lead - which also means that he's Seen you several months down the road, and you're not dead, so stop trying. He won't tell me whether or not he's seen the Teacher, so don't bother trying to get it out of me. Anyway, it's all about this pair overcoming adversity and proving once and for all the love and justice conquer evil. Do you like it?

"It sucks," Mamoru commented lightly, taking Kyoko's hand in his. He put his head down next to her, and stroked her fingers. _I'm sorry, Kyoko..._

_I'm so very sorry._

(TBC)


End file.
